Conflict across Afghanistan has forced more than 500,000 people to leave their homes in 2016, the highest number on record for the country, a UN report said Monday.
As the winter months arrive, aid workers warn of deadly consequences for the hundreds of thousands of people with no shelter and little food.
As of Sunday, the UN says 511,762 individuals have been displaced in Afghanistan so far this year.
The number of returning Afghan refugees from Pakistan is also on the rise. “So far in 2016, 606,384 undocumented Afghans, deportees and refugees have returned,” the report said.
Pakistan is seeking to return around 2.5 million Afghans. Many Afghans sent back to Afghanistan have spent more than 30 years of their lives in Pakistan, after fleeing there during the Soviet-Afghan war.
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